Hester slipped away with the necklace in her hand, and left her mother to welcome her old admirer before she would trouble her about the offered gift. They met like trusting friends whom the years had done nothing to separate. While they were still talking of times gone by, Mr. Raymount entered, received him cordially, and insisted on his remaining with them as long as he could. They were old friends, although rivals, and there had never been any bitterness between them. The major readily agreed, as Mr. Raymount sent to the station for his luggage, and showed him to a room.

18. The Major and Vavasor

—Eighteen —

The Major and Vavasor

Major Marvel was, in one sense, and that not a slight one, a true man. There was no discrepancy between his mental condition and the clothing in which he presented that condition to others. His words, looks, manners, tones, and everything that goes to express man to man expressed what was inside him. What he felt, he showed. I think he was unaware of the possibility of doing otherwise.

At the same time, he had little insight into the feelings of others, and almost no sense of the possibility that the things he was saying might affect his listeners otherwise than they affected him. If he boasted, he meant to boast. He had no very ready sympathy with other people, especially in any suffering he had never himself experienced. But he was scrupulously fair in what he said or did in regard of them, and nothing was so ready to make him angry as any appearance of injustice or show of deception. He would have said that a man’s first business was to take care of himself, as so many think but do not have the courage to say—and so many more who do not think it. But one thing caused him to dislike another quicker than anything—that was when they found the heel of his all but invulnerable vanity and wounded it. Not accustomed to being hurt, he resented hurt all the more sorely when it came.

During dinner he dominated the conversation and evidently expected to be heard. But that was nearly all he wanted. Let him talk, and hear you laugh when he was funny, and he was satisfied. He was fond of telling tales of adventure, some wonderful, some absurd, and just as willing to tell a joke against himself as at the expense of another. Like many of his day who had spent their early years in India, he was full of the amusements and sports with which so much otherwise idle time is passed by Englishmen in the East, and seemed to think nothing connected with the habits of their countrymen there could fail to interest those at home.